Temperature and polarization variations across the microwave sky.Please read the full article by John E. Carlstrom, Thomas M. Crawford, and Lloyd Knox.

Abstract from the paper below:Temperature and polarization variations across the microwave skyinclude the fingerprints of quantum fluctuations in the early universe.They may soon reveal physics at unprecedented energy scales.

Fifty years ago Bell Labs scientists Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson encountered a puzzling excess power coming from a horn reflector antenna they had planned to use for radio astronomical observations. After painstakingly eliminating all possible instrumental explanations, they finally concluded that they had detected a faint microwave signal coming from all directions in the sky.1 That signal was quickly interpreted as coming from thermal radiation left over from a much hotter and earlier period in our universes history, and the Big Bang was established as the dominant cosmological paradigm.2 Cooled by the expansion of the universe to a temperature just below 3 K, so that its intensity peaks in the microwave region of the spectrum, the radiation detected by Penzias and Wilson is known today as the cosmic microwave background (CMB).

The two scientists were awarded the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery.The detection of the CMB and the consensus that the universe had a hot and dense early phase led to a fertile relationship between cosmology and particle physics. The hot early universe was a natural particle accelerator that could reach energieswell beyond what laboratories on Earth will attain in the foreseeable future. Precise measurements of both the spectrum of the CMB and its tiny variationsin brightness from one point to another on the sky reflect the influences of high-energy processes in the early cosmos.